Page:Raymond Augustine McGowan - Bolshevism in Russia and America (1920).pdf/44

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In the Bishops' Programme of Reconstruction, published by the National Catholic War Council, we find the following sentence: "The majority must somehow become owners, at least in part, of the instruments of production." This statement shows that the Programme of the Bishops, while opposing Socialism, opposes Capitalism also and aims at the extension to the majority of the people of private ownership in the means of livelihood. It aims at a society in which wage-earners will also be part owners of the tools and materials with which they work. Involving to a great extent the abolition of the wage system, still it does not propose public ownership of all the means of production and distribution. It rejects Capitalism, but not private ownership.

Another statement in the same paragraph points out a truth of even greater interest now, than when it was written. "However slow the attainment of these ends," it reads, "they will have to be reached before we can have a thoroughly efficient system of production, or an industrial and social order that will be secure from the danger of revolution." Bolshevism is not an isolated phenomenon. It has its roots in the present scheme of things. It is an angry, impatient protest against the economic and social evils of the modern man. It is a bitter cry against Capitalism. Because Capitalism is one kind of private ownership, and the only kind of private ownership many have experienced, men are led in their protest to embrace Socialism. In their deep discontent and their unbridled impatience before the wrongs they suffer, some would rise up in their might and smash the sorry scheme of things. They plan then to build upon the ruins of a capitalist world a new society based on common ownership. But their angry protest and sharp impatience, their hatred of private own-